Sisters Who Were Filmed Without Consent in Manchester Say 'They Chose the Wrong Girls'

Two sisters have spoken out about the "complete violation" they experienced when they were secretly filmed from behind during a night out in Manchester, saying the men responsible picked the wrong targets.

Georgia Scholes, 25, an actress who appears in the ITV crime drama The Bay, and her sister Alex, 22, had just finished eating at a restaurant in the city's Spinningfields district when they became aware that two men were trailing them unusually closely as they climbed a set of stairs.

Georgia, a mother of two, recalled that a nagging feeling that "something felt off" prompted her to look more carefully at one of the men, who was holding his mobile phone at an odd angle. It quickly became clear that he was recording her.

The pair have now waived their right to anonymity to describe what happened, in the hope of highlighting how common and how damaging such behaviour is.

Greater Manchester Police confirmed that two men - one in his 20s and the other in his 30s - were arrested on suspicion of voyeurism following the alleged incident on Deansgate on 19 September. Both have since been released on bail while enquiries continue.

The offence, commonly known as upskirting, involves taking a photograph or recording beneath a person's clothing without their knowledge or consent in order to view their underwear or genitals. It has been a specific criminal offence in England and Wales since 2019, carrying a maximum sentence of two years in prison.

Georgia described the instant she understood what had occurred, saying her heart sank and that she felt utterly violated. She confronted the men directly, asking them to delete the footage, and then broke down in tears as the shock set in.

She said she was left tormented by the knowledge that the man had obtained images up her dress and had walked away with them, with no way of knowing what he intended to do with the material.

According to her account, one of the men shouted abuse while the other remained strangely close to her, and one of them began to run off.

Georgia appealed for assistance from people nearby, but said nobody responded or intervened - a detail she found deeply dispiriting and which she believes reflects how routinely such behaviour is tolerated.

Alex, meanwhile, repeatedly demanded that one of the men delete the video. When he started to flee, she pulled off her heels and gave chase through the city centre streets.

A door supervisor finally stepped in and detained the second man, an intervention the sisters believe was decisive. Both men were arrested shortly afterwards.

Georgia said that without the bouncer's actions, the pair would simply have escaped and she would have been forced to live with the knowledge that the footage was never recovered.

Reflecting on the evening, she said she had felt good after having her hair and make-up done, but that the sense of confidence she had started the night with was stripped away in an instant. The following morning brought what she described as an overwhelming sadness, along with the feeling that she had spent the whole night having to justify herself.

She also voiced frustration about her dealings with police, saying the first question a female officer asked her was whether she was certain the man had been recording her - an enquiry she said planted a seed of doubt rather than offering reassurance.

Her central message is that urging women to be hyper-vigilant on nights out, to watch their surroundings and to monitor their drinks is not a genuine solution. In her view, such advice amounts to little more than a plaster over a much larger problem.

Alex echoed her sister's anger, saying the men had selected the wrong two women that night. She stressed that she and Georgia would not allow themselves to be belittled, that they would defend themselves, and that they had endured a barrage of abuse in the process.

She said she refuses to accept that anyone can violate her, her sister or any other woman in that way and simply escape the consequences. Describing the emotional aftermath, she said the experience taints every positive feeling that had come before it.

Alex argued that this type of offending is too often minimised and normalised, to the point where victims are effectively expected to accept it as an unpleasant fact of life. She believes the standard response should instead be to call out perverted behaviour and harassment whenever it occurs.

The sisters' decision to speak publicly comes amid growing concern about the scale of covert filming of women in public places. A recent BBC investigation found that men were filming women without their knowledge at night and then profiting from the resulting footage.

Legal experts note that while upskirting is now a recognised crime, prosecutions can hinge on proving intent and on the quality of evidence gathered at the scene, which is why victims are often urged to report incidents immediately and preserve any potential witness details.

Campaigners argue that cases like this underline the need for better training for frontline officers, so that victims are not met with scepticism at the very moment they seek help.

For Georgia and Alex, the priority now is to ensure the men involved face the full process of the law, and to send a wider message that women who are targeted in this way will not be silenced or shamed into staying quiet.